Another year, another Office upgrade, will this one
finally be a major update to the office collection, or will it be another
dull update similar to that of Office XP:

Office 2003 Editions can help organizations and their
employees transform information into impact. New and familiar products,
features, and functionality improve how people and organizations connect to
people, information, and business processes.

Advances in intranet collaboration through integration
with the collaboration and information-sharing portal,
Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003, enable employees to
access and share information both internally and externally. Support for
information rights management (IRM) and industry-standard Extensible Markup
Language (XML) provide a platform on which to quickly build cost-effective
solutions that can have an immediate impact.

Connect People

Streamline communication and collaboration between
internal and external team members by using the desktop productivity
programs that many people rely on every day.

Enable teams to modify, access, and save documents in a
central location by using Document Workspaces. In addition, the Shared
Workspace task pane displays tasks, related documents, links, and member
lists that notify you when your team members are online. Document
Workspaces and the Shared Workspace task pane require Microsoft Windows
Server™ 2003 running Microsoft Windows® SharePoint™ Services.

Share documents with team members for modifications and
have control over what gets changed. You can choose permission settings
and allow coauthors to alter only the sections or formatting that you
choose.

Contact team members quickly with instant messaging
(IM), which can be displayed in most programs in Office 2003 Editions and
lets you know when your team members are online. Online presence
information requires Windows Server 2003 running Windows SharePoint
Services.

Schedule meeting times quickly with team members. When
you use the personal information manager and communication program,
Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003, with Windows SharePoint Services, you can
compare schedules side by side or view team calendars.

Help protect and control who can access vital business
information by using IRM, enabled by Microsoft Windows Rights Management
Services (RMS) on Windows Server 2003. IRM prevents or limits documents from
being used in unintended ways, giving organizations and information workers
greater control of their sensitive information. You can:

Help secure company assets by using IRM capabilities to
prevent people who receive documents or e-mail messages from forwarding,
copying, or printing documents and attachments.

Reduce document sharing or unintended use by setting an
expiration date on a document, after which it cannot be viewed or
modified.

Help protect your documents from being unintentionally
changed by using Word Formatting and Editing Restrictions. You can set
permission controls on entire documents or portions of a document to
prevent modifications or reformatting.

Note Microsoft Office
Professional Edition 2003 enables you to create IRM-protected content and
grant other users the rights to access and modify your files or e-mail
messages. With Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003, you can read IRM-protected
files and e-mail messages; with permission, you can modify them as well.

Connect Information

Manage, prioritize, and act on an ever-increasing volume
of business information.

Read e-mail more quickly. The Outlook 2003 Reading Pane
displays twice as much content as previous versions of Outlook, reducing
the amount you need to scroll to read e-mail messages.

Prioritize e-mail messages by using Quick Flags to
indicate a priority or time-sensitive messages.

Save time spent rereading e-mail messages in threaded
conversations. You can group all messages by subject line and then quickly
scan or delete entire conversation threads.

Find important e-mail messages immediately. Use Search
Folders to save commonly used searches and then use them when you need
them. Store the resulting messages in any folder, and still access them
quickly. Search folders require a connection to Microsoft Exchange 2003.

Help block junk e-mail messages from cluttering your
Inbox with the new Junk E-Mail Filter in Outlook 2003.

Use Outlook 2003 in different network environments.
Outlook stays connected to a network even when you roam between different
connections.

Help protect your privacy. With Outlook, you can choose
when to include Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) content in an e-mail
message, and can help prevent unsolicited attachments from automatically
returning information to the originating server.

Keep working regardless of your connection status. If
your network connection is unreliable, the Cached Exchange Mode in
Outlook 2003 saves and displays the information from the last time you
connected to the network. Caching requires Exchange Server 2003.

Access resources while working on a files. The new
Research task pane can help you access electronic dictionaries,
thesauruses, online research sites, and proprietary company information
while working in Office 2003 programs. You can find information and
incorporate it into your work quickly and easily.

Take notes directly in your files. If you use a Tablet
PC, you can use the tablet pen to add comments.

Manipulate and analyze XML business data. Office 2003
programs can manipulate, analyze, and format data from your most critical
business systems. You can customize documents and task panes so that they
integrate with XML data sources and outside programs.

Empower users and reduce development time with XML.
With Microsoft Office Excel 2003, you can use the visual mapping tool to
connect a user-specified XML schema to fields in your spreadsheet.

Below is the estimated retail pricing (ERP) information
for the 2003 release of products, servers and solutions in the Microsoft®
Office System. Microsoft Corp. offers business and individual customers an
array of product editions and stand-alone options so they can choose the
Microsoft Office System solutions that best meet their needs. In addition to
retail options, Microsoft customers can purchase Microsoft Office System
products through Microsoft Volume Licensing programs (for as few as five
desktops) and through original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Edition

Retail Price/Upgrade Price*

Microsoft Office Professional
Enterprise Edition 2003

Available only through volume
licensing; price not quoted

Microsoft Office Professional Edition
2003

$499/$329

Microsoft Office Small Business Edition
2003

$449/$279

Microsoft Office Student and Teacher
Edition 2003

$149/no upgrade available

Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003

$399/$239

Microsoft Office Basic Edition 2003

Available only through OEMs; price not
quoted

Core Applications

Microsoft Office Word 2003

$229/$109

Microsoft Office Excel 2003

$229/$109

Microsoft Office Outlook®
2003

$109/no upgrade available

Microsoft Office PowerPoint®
2003

$229/$109

Microsoft Office Access 2003

$229/$109

Category Applications

Microsoft Office FrontPage®
2003

$199/$109

Microsoft Office InfoPath™ 2003

$199/no upgrade available

Microsoft Office OneNote™ 2003

$199/no upgrade available

$100 (U.S.)/$150 (CDN) mail-in rebate
available for qualifying OneNote customers in North America

** Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 Academic
Edition Full-Packaged Product (FPP) available to students and faculty at
campus/school bookstores and academic resellers. Mail-in rebate does not
apply to the academic edition of OneNote.

Installation

The installation is a breeze, you can either upgrade or do
a clean install. I went with upgrading all of the Office components I had
already got on my system, the only one that wouldn't be upgraded was
FrontPage 2003 which is now a separate package - but I have included that in
my review anyway as it is one of the major office products. The install
takes less than 10 minutes (and that included the uninstall of the older
programs). No reboot is needed once the install has completed either, so
it's as easy as they get. Once again, the program needs to be activated, but
as people are realising now, there is no problem doing this what so ever.